Lily the Great
by dragonrush
Summary: 'But she was Lily the Great (or so she liked to think she was), so she never gave up, fuelled by firm determination and dreams of power and fame and glory.' Stand-alone piece, I'm not making a prequel/sequel/accompaniment. Rated T for mentions of insanity and brief statements touching on themes of mental illness.


When she'd started her journey, she had been a 15-year-old yearning to escape from the suffocating prison that was New Bark Town, yearning to make a name for herself in the world. Even though she was older than the normal starting age, she was painfully naïve, still clinging to the belief that the world was warm and welcoming, that she would make it. That she'd be renown throughout the region - her name would be chanted by the voices of her people.

 _"Lily! Lily! Lily!"_

So she left her sobbing mother all alone, with a longtime deceased husband and a daughter who would later cut all contact with her former life. She picked up a cyndaquil from the lab (how poetic that she would pick the fire starter, when during her journey her life crashed and burned, shattered into a million pieces) and left, traversing across the assorted routes and promising herself that she would be the greatest.

She defeated the first gym leader with ease, the flying-type 'master' quickly falling to the undeniable power of her three-pokemon team. Her cyndaquil - now a quilava, even more powerful and even more destructive, used it's firepower to effectively destroy Falkner's team, while her overenthusiastic mareep and level-headed pidgey assisted when needed. One by one, gym leaders fell before her. She assembled a team surpassing the boundaries of normality as she tore the so-called 'leaders' apart. But, contrary to what her name was defined as, she wasn't pure. The power went to her head as she crushed the region with the heel of her foot, thirsty for power and fame. Petty criminalistics organisations like Team Rocket didn't faze her - they'd all fall eventually, giving into her merciless rampage. Her pokemon adapted to her power-hungry personality, matching her greedy ways. Typhlosion. Pidgeot. Ampharos. Gyarados. Alakazam. Gengar. They all joined her in her downward spiral, chasing after the glory that was _just_ beyond her reach.

But she was Lily the Great (or so she liked to think she was), so she never gave up, fuelled by firm determination and dreams of power and fame and glory. By now, she was transformed beyond recognition. She wasn't the adventurous girl from New Bark anymore. She was someone who sought out something she wrongfully thought she deserved, and that was her downfall.

Team Rocket tried to interfere, to stop her from continuing her path to the prestigious title of champion, but she defeated them with practised ease. To her, they were nothing but unnecessary roadblocks - just obstacles on her way to stardom.

She encountered the champion at the Lake of Rage, with his fiery red hair and dramatic black-and-red cape. She gave him a fake smile and together they defeated the Team Rocket base in Mahogany Town, and all the while she analysed his battling capabilities. He was strong, but she was stronger. Then he left, riding on the back of his impressive dragonite. She silently vowed to end his reign as champion.

The next two gym leaders fell just as easily as the previous ones. The ice man took his loss gracefully, while the immature dragon girl (she wouldn't flatter this ignorant person by calling her a woman) threw a very unladylike tantrum and refused to give her a badge unless she passed a test. So she decided to humour this pathetic blunette and entered the sacred Dragon's Den. Passing the test with flying colours (she simply gave the elderly man sappy, disgustingly sweet answers about her love for her pokemon and how there was no defined line between the weak and the strong), she savoured the look of astonished horror on Clair's face as she pocketed the badge that was the final step in her carefully laid out plans.

The so-called 'best of the best' were no harder than the gym leaders. Psychic, poison, fighting, dark, dragon - they simply didn't matter to her. She was invincible, undefeatable. Even their prized champion - the cape boy from Mahogany Town, apparently his name was Lance - toppled when facing the full brunt of her power.

After that, a lot of _tragic_ occurrences started happening. Lance - the man closest to her position of power - passed away after his pokemon went crazy and started attacking him. The dragon master's team was sent to the pokemon version of rehabilitation as she and her alakazam watched gleefully from the sidelines. One by one, the former elite four fell. Will's psychic powers made him go insane, and he was admitted into a mental hospital. Koga's pokemon accidentally poisoned him, so one day he suddenly dropped dead. Bruno's heart failed him while training. Karen slipped off of her flying pokemon while high up in the air and died on impact. But no one suspected the angelic champion of Johto. So she gave fake sentiments at their funerals and, after a brief period of 'mourning', she set up another elite four - one whom she was certain would obey even her most eccentric commands. They were unwaveringly, unnaturally loyal and blind to her inner insanity. Truthfully, she should've been the one admitted into the mental hospital, not Will.

But that was where everything went straight down the drain. Convinced she was invincible, Lily began revolutionising the region of Johto, completely unprepared for the uprising ahead. Little by little, the public uncovered the secrets she wanted to hide the most. She should've known that no one would be happy with her 'necessary' changes, but she wasn't aware and that was where her grandiose plans were torn apart.

So Lily lost it all, just when she thought she had it made. The entirety of Kanto, Johto and the other 4 champions launched a surprise attack on her while she was defenceless, with all her pokemon safely tucked away in the League building. But they didn't sink to her despicable level. She was trialled immediately, and of course she was deemed guilty. There was no way of worming out of it. The psychiatrists couldn't find any traces of mental unawareness in her brain either, which only made things worse. The lack of mental illness meant that she had done every dark deed she had ever performed while completely aware of what she was doing and how it would effect her target. 'Lily the Great' had been born like any normal baby and had left New Bark Town just like any other person starting their pokemon journey - excited and slightly nervous, shaking with anticipation. But somewhere along the line, she had lost her grip on reality, and had sunk into a pit of pure and utter insanity.

She was sentenced to living her life out in a mental hospital - the same one Will permanently resided in actually, it's funny how things turned out in the end. For moments, she had been the pride of the region - their youngest champion ever, ascending to the prestigious position at the tender age of 16. Now she was a blemish on their records, a preventable mistake that hadn't been stopped until it was just a little too late. Her pokemon, also too far gone, were admitted into rehabilitation, with the experts attempting to ease out Lily's destructive influence on her blindingly loyal pokemon. Her Elite Four were discovered to have been under the control of her immensely powerful Alakazam, and once the strong psychic hold was broken, they returned to their normal lives, albeit shaken from their brief stunt as the puppets of a truly crazy teenage girl.

But in a way, Lily had still achieved her long-desired greatness. Because greatness can be defined as many different things, and in her mind, Lily the Great still existed; as a dream that constantly stayed out of her grasp.

* * *

 _ **I honestly don't know what spurred this, but I just wanted to get the mess of ideas out in print, and this was the result.**_

 _ **Enjoy, I guess?**_


End file.
